PRAXIS is a socio-political collective, rooted in decolonial feminist thinking and a vertical research and teaching atelier in the BA3 and the M.Arch  at the MSA. We explore and ask questions as to what feminist architecture, landscape architecture and urban design might be now and in the future. By using the lens of intersectional feminism, we challenge our students to explore inequalities and inequities in society and what that may mean for the built environment. We teach students to interrogate their own positionality and to design with humility, reciprocity, and care. We develop architects as interpreters of disparate voices, capable of design that mediates experience and expectation in complex socio, economic, and cultural locations.

In BA3, this ethos is enacted through a year-long shelter design project grounded in feminist spatial justice. Working with Kingdom Life Youth and Community Centre (KLYCC) in Old Trafford as client, students design for refuge and sanctuary — for the homeless, survivors of domestic violence, and displaced populations — while attending to more-than-human needs within the built environment. The first semester asks students to ground their brief in lived experience and community knowledge — listening before designing, and positioning the shelter as a site of care, agency, and collective life. In the second semester, that political commitment is tested through material reality: students are challenged to resolve their proposals structurally and technically, so that feminist intent is legible not just in concept, but in construction.

Please check our work out on Instagram @msa.praxis